Folks, I have to give the WinWing Service Team 5-Stars!
I've purchased nearly every WinWing device that's currently available for the F/A-18 Hornet, and I LOVE them ALL! MY only regret is that I Wish I had pulled the trigger on the Super Taurus throttle/HOTAS while it was still available on sale.
I just experienced what I thought was a catastrophic failure of the PTO-2 Panel. It just suddenly showed up, yesterday as an unrecognized USB Device. This after over 4 months of perfect - flawless performance.
I tried (what I thought was) every "Logical" triage step suggested in all the online Forums - from WinWing themselves to DCS, to HOTAS on both Discord & Facebook & Eagle Dynamics to Reddit. I took it off my (very expensive 65W 10-Port) USB 3.0 Hub, and plugged it into one of my PC's only remaining USB 3.2 slot. NOTHING - it remained as an "Unrecognized USB device..."
However...
The 2nd thing "SpaceHamster" (the WinWing Tech) asked was to see a picture of the Status LED in the back of the PTO 2 Panel. So, I had to actually take it off the HOTAS extension Mount in order to get to the actual USB plug, behind the unit. And voila!... It came up perfectly, when I plugged in a different (much more expensive) braided USB 2.0 Type-A-to-C Cable.
And of course, one of the 1st things the online Service Q&A forum suggested was to replace the cable - D'OH!!!....
And here I assumed that couldn't have possibly been the issue. However, I'm guessing that after the USB lights were left on, overnight, 2 nights ago, it must have fried one of the tiny little cables in the WinWing original USB cable that was shipped with the PTO 2 Device. I assumed it couldn't possibly have simply been a bad cable - I was wrong!
So - Lesson-Learned - Replace the WinWing Cable with an expensive (high-power USB 3.0) Type A to C Cable as the 1st step in Trouble-Shooting a bad or dead (seemingly Bricked) PTO-2 or any device for that matter. And in the meantime, here's a picture of my Full-Motion, SimRig, along with an extensive list of the parts:
- WinWing TopGun Full MIP (Left & Right DDI or MFD)
- UFC & HUD
- AMPCD (Center/Lower MFD)
- Orion-2 HOTAS with F15EX (and Finger-Lift) Throttle
- Orion-2 F16EX Joystick
- PTO-2 Take-Off Panel
- Hornet Sim Shop (HSS) Full Dashboard Pre-Printed & HUD Box
- TekCreations IFEI (Intelligent Fuel/Engine Information Panel)
- TekCreations Left Console Panel V3 (Lite)
- TekCreations Right Console Panel V3 (Lite)
- Logitech G Pro Rudder Pedals
(With replacement 3D-Printed Cessna Pedals - I highly Suggest these pedal replacements for any and ALL Logi G-Pro owners. It fixes/corrects the braking angle required to effectively apply brakes or engage the Rudders without Braking.
- DOF Reality P3 Full Motion Platform
- Samsung 43" Odyssey Neo G7 4K UHD Gaming Monitor
- Witmotion WT901C Motion Compensation sensor
- Elgato StreamDeck Plus
- Aida64 Sensor Panel (Customized and running on a 15" Touchscreen)
- Sim Racing Studio (SRS) running on a 12" Touchscreen
- Next Level Racing (Air Force/Boeing designed) Gaming Rig Seat & 4-Point Harness (And YES - you really do need a harness to keep you in the seat when banking, or hanging on at the 20 degree angle while pulling back on the stick for a tight, High-G turn!
- Several 4040, 4080 and 3030 Aluminum Extrusion sections to create a floorboard for climbing-in, as well as some "Oh-<profanity>" Handles for hanging on in those high-G banks and Carrier Take-Offs.
- Gaming PC Specs: Powered by AMD 7800X3D / NVIDIA 4070 Super, 64GB DDR6 6400Hz RAM, dual 2TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe, 1TB Seagate SSD, (12) Lian-Li fans and L-Connect3 & SignalRGB, Corsair RM850X powering it and a BeQuiet DarkRock 5 (with additional Fan for complete Push-Pull efficient cooling of the Radiator).
Folks, if I'd have known how much fun this would be, I wouldn't have waited until retirement to make this invenstome of my time and $$. This really makes DCS Rock!
(And just in time, too, since MS has so thoroughly messed up MSFS2020 and the new FS2024 Flight Sim experience for all of us.)
Thank You, WINWING for Great Customer Support and your Service Tech - "SpaceHamster" you and he deserve a 5.5-Star Rating for your patience and quick response times, online in your Service Chat Support Tab!
Great Job - Please keep it up (and please bring BACK the Super Taurus Throttle-HOTAS - maybe a Gen-2 Version with Force Feedback???). I'm waiting to test it out and review it for you!
